A young Lebanese man in Paris recognizes an old man on the Metro as
a face from his school history book; someone who had left the
Lebanon during World War II to fight with the Resistance in France.
The elderly Ossayne responds to the young man's friendly approach,
and soon is telling his life story. This begins long before his
birth, in the house of a deposed sovereign whose suicide causes his
daughter to lose her wits. The daughter is Ossayne's grandmother,
and he describes his father's privileged upbringing in an Ottoman
household in Adana, which ends in 1909, when, in a gesture of
rebellion, the young Turkish aristocrat flees with his Armenian
tutor to Mont Lebanon. He marries his tutor's daughter, and they
call their son Ossayne, a name which represents his father's
protest against a history of sectarianism and violence. During the
Resistance Ossayne marries a beautiful Jewish woman and moves to
Haifa, but there is a cruel fate in store for this happy young
couple. Malouf's first novel to have a contemporary setting
dramatizes the conflict and anarchy that have beset his native
Lebanon in the past century through the story of one man's life. It
is also a beautiful work of fiction that tells a poignant love
story. (Kirkus UK)
New galaxy-hopping, picaresque adventure from a master storyteller.
Sf grand master Vance's latest is a tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler
about a young man, Myron Tany, who has taken a degree in space
studies but has much to learn when he first boards a ship. Myron is
in thrall to his zany aunt, who has heard of a faraway fountain of
youth and sets off in her space yacht to find it. Her captain
flatters her agreeably, and when Myron points out that the man is a
swindler, she won't hear of it and maroons poor Myron on an
inhospitable planet with barely his passage home. Luckily, the
tramp cargo vessel Glicca is just then in need of a supercargo, and
Myron signs on with cool, competent Captain Maloof, Chief
Engineer/gambler Schwatzendale, and Chief Steward/photographer
Wingo. The four enjoy a string of rare adventures on a spectacular
series of planets. They acquire as passengers a group of pilgrims
(and their mysterious luggage), or rather, pirates masquerading as
religious pilgrims, and engage in to-the-death struggles with the
pirates' pursuers; on Terce, Myron narrowly avoids being skinned
(there is a flourishing trade in human skins) and eaten. Finally,
they encounter a Swiftian, legalistic planet on which one may be
punished or betrothed for the slightest whimsical offense. Myron is
bound to commit one...
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